


Speed and Spitfire

by GuardianLioness



Series: Young Justice Platonic Soulbond AU [4]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Can be read as stand-alone, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulbond AU, Platonic Soulmates, Platonic Spitfire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 14:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15197021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianLioness/pseuds/GuardianLioness
Summary: Artemis doesn't want any of the blank marks on her body to glow like the single splash of color on her arm. She doesn't want any other soulbonds. Jade is bad enough. She especially doesn't want to be bonded to Wallace Rudolph West, the Most Arrogant Man Alive.Gen/platonic soul mark AU in which individuals have marks for everyone vitally important in their lives.





	Speed and Spitfire

**Author's Note:**

> Some tweaks to canon because no one wants to read an episode over again. However, this does kinda flit between events of S1.
> 
> Thanks to [Vaders_Apprentice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaders_Apprentice/pseuds/Vaders_Apprentice) for the request!
> 
> Not sure if this should be tagged Spitfire, because it’s intended to take place pre-relationship according to the canon timeline, and there’s really nothing in it that could be called overtly “shippy”, but it’s about their dynamic. Feedback on that regard would be well received; I’m more than willing to edit tags.
> 
> With this piece, I’m officially done with the requests I’ve received for this universe so far. Shoot some more character sets my way? Please?

The Cheshire Cat smoke that trails along Artemis’s arm is the only place on her skin with color. It fits hidden underneath sleeves when she’s a civilian. It’s obscured even more effectively by the bracer that protects her from snapping bowstrings.

She’s satisfied with it, with the single mark on her body. She doesn’t need more to spot her frame, to betray quiet feelings that should stay buried in the recesses of her heart. 

There are more lines, of course, fractals and entangled shapes traced in scar-like white. They’re not active. It’s better they stay that way.

To Artemis, the blank marks are ideal. Active marks can be matched. Matches can be traced to people. And people? People can be used. 

Her dad doesn’t need any more help ruining her life. Jade has already done enough damage.

The only bond she has, will ever have, is with her sister.

Which is why, when she sees her precise triangle-point stripes carved into the chest of her klutz of a teammate, it feels like she’s been punched in the jaw.

He runs in, shirtless, arms full of beach equipment, and makes a fool of himself immediately, tripping headlong over his own feet. He’s a human disaster.

A disaster with her bond mark clearly stamped on his person.

The words slip from her tongue, sharp and acidic, before she can stop them. “Wall-man, huh? What’s your superpower?”   
  
He’s an embarrassment, and he clearly knows it. The skin under his freckles shifts to an even paler shade of white before flushing red. An embarrassment _and_ a liability.

The blood is rushing to Artemis’s head, and her pulse stutters. She doesn’t even know what she’s saying, only that she’s sniping at him again, and his voice spikes in anger. It’s rough and reedy at the same time. Squawky and young. 

Some hero he must be. 

She’s dimly aware that either his mark is obscured by her uniform, or he’s too dense to recognize his own pattern among the lines on her arms. He brushes past her, refusing to give her a second glance until something laced with sarcasm slips from her mouth, and he turns back to glare.

It doesn’t hurt when he looks at her like that. It doesn’t hurt, because she doesn’t care about any more soul bonds or soulmates. She’s not here to make friends, as cliche as that sounds. She’s just here to get back at her deadbeat assassin dad and do some good to balance the damage he’s done — to the world and to her. 

She rolls her eyes as he continues to complain, get all up in Ollie’s face, and to shy away from the Batman’s hardened expression.

The boy storms off when he realizes that she’s on the team, like it or not, and returns a few moments later in yellow and red. He’s _Kid Flash_. She probably missed the introduction in her moment of shock.

A memory of the same bright colors blurring across her mom’s clunky TV screen replays in her head. 

A wiry boy crouches next to a crying girl who can’t be more than four years old. Blue and red lights illuminate police cars in the background. The boy smiles at the girl and says something that the news cameras don’t pick up. Then, he raises his hand, and twitches, letting a soft cascade of gold sparks fall from his fingers.

Artemis remembers the look of delight on the girl’s face with perfect clarity. 

_This_ Kid Flash has none of that softness. He definitely doesn’t have anything resembling charm. 

But that’s okay. Because Artemis won’t have any more soul bonds. Jade is _more_ than enough for her.

Kid Jerk won’t ever know that they’re connected. Their bond will never activate, and they can hopefully do some good. All she has to do is figure out how to cope with just how obnoxious he actually is. 

X

Wally is weird, in personality _and_ powers. Though, considering how often he gloats about the fact that he gave himself superhuman speed in his garage, the two are probably connected. It isn’t until a mission goes south, however, that she learns he can _spread_ that weirdness.

Artemis’s ears are ringing. Every crunch of gravel, every grunt of exertion echoes in her ears like the clanging bell in the tower atop Gotham Cathedral. She’s sprawled on concrete, bleeding in two or three places, including a monster of a cut on her forehead.

Robin isn’t faring much better than she is. The two of them were sent to scout for the enemy but lost their focus. And they’re paying for it.

A man in tactical gear has the Boy Wonder backed into a corner, _literally_. Robin is standing pressed flat against a wall with a gun to his head. Artemis can see their mouths moving, but from this distance and with her ears still keening, the conversation only sounds like thrumming chimes. 

The man’s trigger finger twitches —

There’s a crackle, a pop, and then Robin is standing over her, and the man’s gun is clattering to the ground, and everything smells like _ozone_.

He’s already tugging her to her feet and shoving a compound bow back into her hands.

Only when the remaining enemies are knocked out and tied up does she realize how hard he’s breathing. He’s trembling, and his stride lists, almost like he’s drunk. 

“Okay, Robin, what the heck was that?”

Still panting, he smirks. “Well, it’s Kid Flash’s fault, really.” Artemis blinks, and he lets out one of his ghostly laughs at her expense. “Fun fact, speedsters give their soul bonds a little extra…gift.”

“What are you _talking_ about?”

He tilts his head, and his mask wrinkles, like his nose is scrunched up in amusement. “I stole his speed force connection. I can’t always make it work, but it’s been useful a few times.” 

He sways again, and Artemis grabs his wrist, tugging his arm over her shoulders. 

“Can—,” he swallows, “can we head back and find him, actually? I uh, need to borrow some of his snack store.”  
  
Artemis frowns. “What for?”  
  
“Blood sugar crash.”  
  
Oh.  
  
“Don’t make me carry you.”  
  
Robin snickers at her tone, but leans on her as they shuffle back in the direction they came.

Her teammate seems to recognize that her hearing isn’t up to par, because he’s swiveling his head, scanning, as alert as he can be in the circumstances. 

“Wait, you and _Wally_?” The words are out of her mouth before she thinks about what it is she’s actually saying. It’s the head trauma, most likely. Her obvious concussion causing a lapse in judgement. That happens, right?

“He’s my best friend.”

A gift. Wally’s soul bond gave Robin a gift, the ability to move like him, to keep pace with him, even if just for a moment. 

His best friend.  
  
Robin is precocious, snarky, and wildly intelligent. He can be easy friends with anyone, and he chose _Wally West_ to be his best friend.  
  
Just as Artemis is about to make some comment about poor taste, the boy squirms away from her. He hikes his pants up over his ankle to display a winding burst of lightning in burning red and gold. The weave of the lines match the spider web of electricity that spreads across her collarbone.

Her hand hovers over her neck for a moment as Robin tucks the cuff back into his boot. The corners of his mouth twitch, threatening another smirk that makes Artemis’s stomach turn with unease.

X

She wakes with sore muscles, a throbbing head, sand coating her arms, and instinctive panic-grab for her bow, which fortunately, is right on the sand next to her. Fingers curling around the grip, she groans and opens her eyes. A panicked cry rises and then dies in her throat.

Around her are dilapidated, wooden walls. There’s no floor; she knows because she’s lying flat on her back in the dirt.

Standing over her, hands outstretched, is a boy in a dark jumpsuit.

With a growl, she springs back and away from him. “Where am I? Who _are_ you?” she snaps, and then realizes that letting a stranger know that she’s confused and probably scared isn’t the wisest move.

“Woah, woah,” the boy says, his voice the same kind of calm that people use when speaking to cornered animals. “Easy. I’m Kid Flash. One of the good guys.”

“Seen Kid Flash on the news. He doesn’t wear black.”  
  
The boy cracks a sheepish smile. “Honestly? I’m just as confused on that point as you are.”  
  
He doesn’t seem suspicious, but how many times has Artemis seen her father disarm her mother with a smile like that?  
  
She hears the Kid Flash impostor mutter something about Green Arrow, and she glances down to see that her clothing is skin-tight, decorated with arrowhead branding in shades of olive. Dad. Ugh.  
  
“He probably wants me to kill you,” she says, and maybe he’s not an impostor, because why would Sportsmaster, the _assassin_ , arrange for his daughter to kill anyone that wasn’t a real threat?

“What?!”  
  
A grinding noise cuts short the start of his interrogation. The wind is knocked from Artemis’s lungs as the boy lunges for her. He scoops her up and careens towards the door of the rotting shack.

He’s _fast._ Any doubts about his being the actual Kid Flash are thrown out the window. How many red-headed teenagers could not only carry her running, but at speeds that make her eyes water with windburn?

An explosion thrums across the open desert, and she hears a cracking, a splintering. She looks over Kid Flash’s shoulder. The shack is gone, replaced by a glassy crater in the sand.

“See?” She can barely hear him over the roaring air, but she reads his lips as he repeats it. “One of the good guys.”  
  
Artemis doesn’t nod to him in response, but she doesn’t struggle in his grip.

An entire convoy is after them. Tanks, armored jeeps, and a couple of vehicles that look like they’ve been modified for speed on sand. 

Dunes and dull orange light spread out for miles. Kid Flash is tracking so fast that he leaves a furrow in the ground instead of footprints, but the gap between them isn’t growing any larger. 

They haven’t run for long when Artemis feels Kid Flash’s chest heaving as he gasps for air. He’s tired. A breath hisses through Artemis’s teeth. The tanks are going to gain on them if the hero so much as stumbles.

“Don’t drop me.”   
  
She waits until he blinks in surprised acknowledgement, and then twists so that she can reach her quiver and put an arrow to her bowstring. The tip of the shaft is odd, cylindrical instead of pointed, but given the casing and the patch of orange paint on the side, she’s willing to bet that this arrowhead is designed to do something a little more flashy than she’s used to. The Green Arrow outfit has to have _some_ meaning.

The arrow hisses as it leaps from the string and bursts against the front window of the front-running jeep, burying it in an eruption of flames.

Yep. Way more effective than stabbing. The jeep spins out of control, and the driver lurches out onto the sand.

“Whatever you just did,” Kid Flash pants, “do it again!” There’s not much Artemis can do about the tanks, but whittling down enemy numbers can’t hurt.

She nocks another arrow and grins. Her dad’s going to be _ticked_ when he realizes she’s helping a speedster.

Their plan works until the tanks start taking potshots at them. The missiles are too large to do anything but make Kid Flash veer away, but the shrapnel that shoots out from the exploding shell casing is another issue. 

Hot shards of metal rain down from the sky, and Kid Flash skids to the side. They only have so long before he’s exhausted, and given the way that his arms are starting to shake, they’ll have to stop sooner rather than later. 

A series of rock outcroppings looms in the distance. As another missile goes off. He dives through the smoke. Using the explosion as a cover, they duck behind the nearest boulder and book it to a place where the rock has split, forming natural cover.

He just manages to set Artemis down before collapsing to his knees.

“Sorry, gotta…gotta breathe for a minute.”  
  
Artemis nods, drawing another arrow. She paces along the edge of the boulder, listening for the enemy, and draws her bow, wincing as she feels something sharp pull across her collarbone.

There’s a gash in the forest green mesh of her shirt. A trail of blood seeps from the cut. Great. Her adrenaline must be working overtime, because she didn’t feel it at all. 

Tucking the explosive arrow back into the quiver, she draws one with serrated edges. The fiber splits beneath the bladed teeth. To get to the wound, the portion that covers the top of her collarbone has to go, and part of the neck as well, but when she can see the gash, she sighs in relief.  
  
The cut is shallow, superficial, and probably won’t even need stitching. She presses the fabric scrap against it to staunch the flow. When it slows, she tucks the scrap into a pouch on the side of her quiver. Leaving an obvious DNA sample behind is a mistake even she knows not to make.

She turns back to Kid Flash, who’s now flat on his back on the ground. “Check to make sure you’re not injured, looks like I got grazed,” she says.

He looks up at her with bleary eyes and nods, but then freezes, blinking slowly.  
  
“What, you never seen a cut before?” Artemis crosses her arms.

“Sorry,” he blurts out, lowering his gaze. He slowly checks himself over as Artemis peers out from behind the rock.

They’re getting ready to run again, even though Kid Flash still looks exhausted, when the silhouette of a girl _flies_ over the darkening horizon and calls out to them.

X

Wally is somehow even more annoying after the incident in Bialya. He _hovers_ , fingers drumming against the table or the wall, not really _talking_ , but not being _quiet_ , either. He sits a few yards away while she’s maintaining her bow kit, pacing or reading or even just _watching_ her. 

He’s sitting across from her at the Cave kitchen table the week before finals, doing his usual, weird fidget-thing, eyes glued to her. What, does he think she can’t see him? 

Maybe it’s the length of the essay she’s working on, or the fact that it was assigned by the biggest cape-hating jerk of a teacher Gotham Academy has ever known, or the way that he’s _staring_ at her, but she finally snaps. “Will you _quit_ that?” She reaches to grab his hand and stop the incessant drumming, and he jolts away before she can touch him.

His expression shifts from surprise to hurt to completely and utterly blank at a speed only he or his uncle can clock. He pushes back from the table and walks away.

She only feels a little bit guilty as she picks up her eraser to make revisions.

X

The next time she sees him is two weeks later. School is over for the semester, and she’s in a much better mood. In fact, she’s even willing to admit that she shouldn’t have yelled at him like that. Wally may be annoying, but any competent sniper — and Artemis _is_ a competent sniper — knows that patience is key. With teamwork as well as targets.

She zetas to the cave for a long overdue training session with Ollie to find him walking through the entryway. He’s shuffling, not running.

His head jolts up when the tube announces her name and ID number, freezing with a deer-in-the-headlights expression that’s hilarious, and on anyone else’s face, maybe even endearing. It’s like a kid caught stealing from the cookie jar. Sadly, he’s known him long enough to know that he’d never be ashamed of snatching the kitchen’s baked goods.

“Hey Artemis,” he says, his voice cracking on her name. “Can we talk?”  
  
Is there a single human on this earth that doesn’t hate those three words?

She takes a long look at him, her arms crossed. It would be so much easier to just say no, to brush past him and grab her bow and shoot exploding arrows at target dummies wearing masks like her dad’s while Ollie laughs and gives unhelpful suggestions about her shooting form. 

“O…kay?”  


Wally bites his lip, and his fingers twitch even more than normal when he gestures for her to follow him down the corridor to a quieter corner of the Cave. They stand there for a minute, hovering in the hall outside of the cleaning closet, and wait. Panic flashes in Wally’s eyes. He doesn’t speak, and then it all comes rushing out at once.  
  
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’ve messed everything up, I am _so_ sorry. I didn’t even think, and because I was an _idiot_ I destroyed things before they could even happen, and I didn’t treat you like friends, teammates should treat each other but then Bialya and our memories and now I have to fix things, I really wanted to try to fix things before you decide to reject me for good.”

He pauses, takes the biggest breath he can, and miraculously, _slows down_.

“I haven’t been honest with you, Artemis.” 

Oh. Oh crap. He knows.  
  
Her stomach plummets. He knows, and she knows, and in such a small, enclosed space, she can’t move fast enough if he decides to reach out and touch her and —

“You have my mark.” He says it as quietly as he can, gesturing to the area above his sternum. “I saw it while we were running through the desert. When you got cut.” A shaky breath cuts his voice off, and he teeters on the edge of speaking again for an agonizing moment. 

“We’re supposed to be friends.”

“Duh, you didn’t exactly make that hard to figure out, Baywatch.” The fear vanishes, evaporating in fire. 

“What?” Wally blinks.

“You really weren't subtle! Crashing in here on the first day with no shirt on? Who does that?!”

Flushed, he pulls his arms in closer to himself. “You…knew? And you didn’t tell me?”  
  
“Why would I?! Doubting me? Complaining that I wasn’t Red Arrow? Insulting me every chance you got?”

The deathly quiet that settles in the hallway and the glazed, watery look in his eyes are indication enough that he understands. “So you don’t want me then.” 

What? Want him? Is…that how he thinks of this? Since when does _want_ enter into the equation?  
  
You don’t _want_ soul bonds.

Artemis doesn't _want_ Jade’s green smoke trails burned into her arm with terror, duty and an unsettled sense of love. She doesn’t _want_ to care about her sister when she knows what feelings will underly their interactions for years. She doesn’t _want_ Wally because she doesn’t want _anyone_.

Her silence stretches on too long, because she sees a spark drop from Wally’s hand and almost flinches before she sees the subtle change in his stance. He’s not going to run towards her. He’s not trying to outpace her. No, his shoulders are shifted to run away.

“Stop.” He freezes, but doesn’t look her in the eye. “I don’t know you, Wally and I can’t want someone I don’t know. But…if you meant what you said? That you want to fix things? I might. Someday. So, let’s just…start over again.”

The boy has to swipe his sleeve over his eyes before he’ll actually meet her gaze. He gives her an uneven smile. “Y-yeah. Okay.” 

X

Bruised, bloody, and exhausted, the team sinks to the floor of the Watchtower. Artemis sets her bow down as Wally drops to the ground next to her.They sit there, trying to calm themselves, togather their thoughts, to cope with the battle against the people that trained them, that _love_ them, the people that in any other circumstance would be fighting _for_ them.

A holographic clock appears, projecting the date and time. Chimes begin to play. 

It’s the start of a new year. The start of a new world.

Artemis reaches out. Wally tugs off his glove.

Their palms touch, and she’s lost in the deepest trust she’s ever known.


End file.
